Wither With Me

CHAPTER 36 - ANOMALY

The man opened the door, stepped inside and flicked the light switch. It was a rather empty room, containing only a table with some uncomfortable-looking chairs, a whiteboard on the wall and several filing cabinets full of documents and reports.

He took a seat, placed the binder he carried on the table, and waited patiently.

...

Eventually, he heard voices and footsteps coming from the hallway. He turned his eyes towards the door, right as the newcomers arrived.

"Dr. Elizabeth." he said.

In the doorframe stood a tall woman, wearing glasses and a white lab coat, with long blonde hair gathered in a bun. She had a distinct, elegant feel to her appearance, despite the dark bags under her eyes.

"It's good to see you, Rowan. It's rare to bump into you lately, with everything that's been going on."

"I told you not to address me like that..."

"Yeah, yeah... Roger that, colonel." she said, almost disregarding his words.

A burly man in full military attire followed her closely from behind.

"Colonel." he saluted him. "Captain of Alpha team, Isaac Stone, reporting in."

Rowan returned the salute, and watched as Isaac took the seat in front of him. There was only one person missing. He showed up about thirty seconds later, a similarly dressed man with slimmer physique.

"Intelligence officer, Ronald Mason, reporting in, sir." he announced, saluting him as well.

He closed the door, and took the last remaining seat.

"Let's get straight to the crucial points." said Rowan. "Regarding the discoveries on the subway underground... Dr. Elizabeth, please."

"Let's see... After analyzing the footage and samples Bravo team brought back from the tunnels, we've confirmed that the unidentified mass of organic tissue they found is indeed the husk of a praetorian stinger cocoon. It's pretty recent, a couple of weeks old at most." she explained, while reviewing some lab reports.

Elizabeth's words were causing lots of concerning issues to build up inside Rowan's head, but he'd rather not interrupt her.

"So far, this cell has displayed a rapid proliferation of new queens, that get immediately devoured by their own colony. Since no queen managed to survive for longer than a few hours, the colony couldn't establish a proper hive, which is, generally speaking, a prerequisite for the spawning of praetorians. Since we have now confirmed the presence of one of them, this can only mean a stable queen has arisen."

"Hmmm..." Rowan mumbled to himself. His voice caused Elizabeth to stop talking for a moment. "If a hive shows up, it'll be catastrophic for our safety. We have taken a lot of risks coming here for the sake of research, but I won't throw my men into a deathtrap."

"The emergence of a hive is not guaranteed. You see, that praetorian in itself is severely anomalous. The samples indicate that it was formed through the amalgamation of several flawed stinger drones. This shouldn't be possible. Praetorians have only been observed to spawn from special eggs laid by the queen. This kind of procedure is unprecedented... Besides, there're no signs of a hive so far. If there's a stable queen running around, it's clearly not doing its job."

"Is it safe to assume you don't know what's going on?"

"Well, I have a theory... Since queen pheromones are tightly tied to their emotional state, it's possible this new queen has gone through severe distress, something that made her self-preservation instincts kick in with enough force to induce this unnatural spawning process. Praetorians are pretty much the queen's royal guards after all... However, something's off about this theory. This queen isn't doing what the colony needs it to do, so the praetorian would try to kill her, not protect her..."